There is always the problem of conservation of a culture vs preservation.
If people choose to eat McD, and Pasta hut. If they move away from traditional Chinese medicine, are they being Westernized? Yes.
Are this ethnic genocide of the Han? Urm.
Many young people will choose to adopt the new. Turn there backs on the old. With or without other agents of change (missionaries, global corporations), change will happen. Is it right? Is it wrong? Who knows.
My ancestors were Irish. Has modernisation, change, breaking the shackles of the powers that were improved the lot of the Irish people over the last 100 years? Hell yes.
Contraception broke all the rules of the accepted culture of the 20th century in Ireland. Average family sizes have more than halved, is that a good thing for society? women not having 18 kids any more?
Ultimately, development leads to a homogenisation of culture, to some degree. It is one thing to say that a society and cultural values should be preserved. It is another to say that an ethnic group should not develop, I know nobody is saying that, but that is the likely effect.
Despite Yunnan being a big focus of missionaries, it's going to take a million more than the few thousand here to brain-wash out minority culture. It's a large and rural province.
Minority culture is doing alright here. Gov't policies are pretty-pro minority. The number of minority festivals you can attend would keep you busy all year. Tourist dollars make minority culture an asset not liability.
By and far the most dilutive factor to minority culture is the same here as elsewhere in China or the world for that matter. The young leave the rural villages in search of a better life and opportunities in the big modern urban cities. There are only the old left in the villages practicing daily minority life with no one to pass on that culture to.
I agree with @Blobbles that the contribution here is good food for thought. Was also wondering that since we are on GoK there must be contributers who are part of the organizations listed on the site (copied below) that would have some input on this issue. It seems like this has become more of a one track discussion, but at the same time there's probably a lot of benefits organizations bring to the benefit of minority villages.
Missions in China - Yunnan
American Baptist
Asia Harvest
Scott Coats
CEDAR
Tearfund
USAID Faith Based Initiativs
Bless China International - Was Project Grace
Wicker Basket North
Wicker Basket West
Hani Coffee
Hanicup
Kunming International Fellowship
New Life Center Foundation
YWAM from Thailand
SIL - National Office is in Kunming
Business as Mission
Canaan Gift Shop
Heart to Hands
That being said, Salvadores (unsolicited, uncompensated plug) does fantastic work in their chosen village sponsorship - just look at their staff (happy vs grumpy) and the gokm banner.
When the KMT moved their government to Taiwan - they ticked off the local Chinese immigrant population (secret police, kidnappings, disappearances - all documented), but provided incredible benefits to the indigenous aboriginal population (the REAL Taiwanese). In general, the Taiwanese aborigines were well known resistance fighters to the Dutch occupation and the eventual Japanese occupation - can't say the same for the other people groups on the islands (although history speaks for itself - and it's not particularly kind).
As for Wicker Basket North - love their inventories!
well, during the Dutch occupation, the Dutch encouraged Han migration from the mainland and used the Han as tax collectors. The Han then used their tax collector power to steal land from the aboriginals. So to the aboriginals, the Han have been both liars and murderers since.
That had been the modus operandi of the Dutch even in Indonesia where the Dutch allowed the indigenous only local trade permit (street vendors), and gave the Chinese migrants the permit to trade inter-region within Indonesia and the chinese used that power to squeeze the local traders, while the Dutch monopolized the import and export (international trade). The grip on inter-regional trade within Indonesia by the Chinese is so entrenched, it's combined economic power became a threat to the then government after the Nation gaining independent status. sadly, the anti-chinese sentiment erupted into a mass killing of chinese and the expulsion of chinese.
now, i will tread carefully and just ask. what happens in Tibet? and any resemblance? :-)
and if one examines the government published national census data in the earlier years of the republic's history, one would find abnormality expressed in a 'sudden' large population decline in the region. interesting? indeed. :-)
and remember, the chinese is a minority in Indonesia.
Taken from a travel book
Kunming
The city's bloodiest period occurred during the Qing dynasty, with a series of Muslim rebellions. Between 1648 and 1878, more than twelve million Hui and Uighur Muslims were killed in ten unsuccessful uprisings against the Qing Dynasty.
Guizhou
By that time the empire had relocated so many eastern Chinese colonists to this unforgiving land that the province's population had soared from 65 to 150 million. A series of rebellions was dealt with mercilessly by succeeding generations of Tunpuren, or Han military colonists. Eighteen-thousand Miao were killed in 1732, with almost the same number executed and a similar amount enslaved. More than 100 years later the scenario was repeated. The governor of Guizhou wrote that the province had lost nine-tenths of its entire population in just 2 decades, either massacred or exiled to the hills of northern Laos, Burma, and Thailand.
A closer look at the map reveals how these proud, defiant peoples have been dominated and humiliated by Chinese colonists. Name after name stands out like marker flags on a campaign plan: Anshun (Peace and Submission); Liping (Pacification of the Li); Zhenyuan (Pacification of the Distant Tribes); Guiding (Pacification of Guizhou); Luodian (Extension of Imperial Power); and Kaili (Village of the Victory Song).
Yep, history is pretty bad everywhere you look though and the world appears to have moved on and learnt a lot from each other (well, generally) once it became interconnected through communications and transport advances. I think its more important to look at fairly recent history however, how people have been treated in say the last 50 years or a couple of generations.
The reason I am thinking this is that the Wests atrocities against minorities is also rather terrible pre-1950's. I mean seriously, name a place that westerners arrived in where the natives weren't treated badly. From the America's (both North & South) to Australia & NZ, to India, to Indonesia to China to... I could continue but you get my point. Reading history books about British or American colonisation basically reads the same.
Sorry, didn't really make my point.
My point is that you can't take a place like China and claim that its previously treated minorities badly and cast a bad light on China when:
1. At the same time westerners were doing the same thing.
2. The people and governments of that time are dust.
3. The advancements culturally, technologically, socially since those times renders such arguments as pointless when viewed in todays context.
Bad stuff was done by everyone a long time ago. Its important we learn from it and don't make the same mistakes but we can't cast aspersions on current governments/cultures when they have changed so much since then.
Anyone who thinks the organizations listed above in this forum entry have backed off are completely wrong. Anyone who thinks they are not wiping out minority cultures in Yunnan is very wrong. They march on. And until the Chinese government works out a plan to stop them and protect the minority peoples from their power structure and exploitation (dumbing down, replacement of traditional leadership) the situation will continue. These groups and the people who run them will always deny what they are really up to.
